God’s Providence in Strategic Moments
Christmas of 1986, I was given the devotional book Awake My Heart, by J. Sidlow Baxter. The lady who gave it to me was a member of a church in the Lucedale area, where I was pastor. Across that year, she suffered through surgeries and various treatments for cancer. In many ways, she was more help to me through those years than I was to her. One day, she drove up in my driveway, got out of her car, and put her hand under my chin, pushing my eyes skyward. She said, “Eddie Davidson! Don’t you be discouraged! You keep your eyes on Jesus!” She wrote the following note in the flyleaf of the book she gave me: “I love you like one of my own sons. I have used this book through one of the most difficult years of my life. May the Lord use it to bless you.” Someone had given her the book, and she was simply passing the blessing on to me.
Six months later, on June 3, 1987, I was standing in church preaching her funeral. The devotional for that day from Baxter’s book was entitled, Is Jesus Glorified in Me? I read from that day’s devotion at her funeral. Baxter quoted F. B. Meyer, who said, “In every true believer, Jesus is present. In some, He is not only present, He is prominent. In others, all too few, He is not only present and prominent, He is preeminent.”
Everyone there that day knew that those words never fit anyone better they fit my dear friend Wanda Vincent. The influence of Wanda’s life shaped my life through the pages of that book she left in my care. God used it to deepen my spiritual life and to serve as the unseen hand that would lift my eyes heavenward for the next thirty years. Then in 2017, I found myself returning to the Lucedale area be the pastor of First Baptist Church.
Looking out across the congregation, I saw faces of people I had known years earlier. One of them was Mary Evelyn Evans, a strong leader in that church. One day, it clicked with me that there was another note in the book Wanda had given me. It said simply, “From my good friend, Mary Evelyn.” Suddenly, I realized that sitting in my congregation every Sunday was the person who was the reason for the book that shaped my life. I reached out to her and thanked her for the blessing she was to me without ever knowing it. Some would say, “It was just a book with a note after all. What is the big deal?” The big deal is that God was working in it, and through it, and all around it to accomplish His purpose in my life. But it was not only my life. It was the lives of so many others He blessed by using that book in my hands to encourage others.
I share this to show you how the Lord puts people in our lives at strategic moments. Sometimes the hands He uses to shape the clay of our lives are hands that touch our lives only in passing. Such is the way of God’s providence. Do you see God’s providence at work in your church at the present time?
Christmas of this year will mark forty years since Baxter’s book was first placed in my hand. Across those years, I am the product of many people whose hands God has used to shape my life! Like Wanda’s hand under my chin, your hands and hearts have touched my life, encouraging me and enriching my walk with the Lord. Now let me put my hand under your chin, lifting your eyes to Jesus with an eager anticipation for how He will shape all of our lives in the days ahead.
Pastor Eddie Davidson